by M. ORENDA
He turns away from her, now growling at his men. “Three minutes!”
The transport drops in a sharper descent, the surge of engines drowned out by the rustling of men in suits, the slip of straps, and the click of weapons.
Voss glares at the sudden static in the comm window, teeth clenched, breath coming up short. You didn’t need to warn me. He fights to lock it down, stay cold, but watching her suffer has exactly the effect it was intended to.
“Target has entered our airspace,” Gojo says.
“Allow it to land,” Voss replies. “Do not fire on that transport.”
“Copy that.”
“I should go,” the security chief says. “I’ll take the elevator down, and then we’ll cut the power to it, like you said… while you negotiate.”
“Go,” Voss tells him.
The man purses his lips, looking lost. “I hope it goes well.”
“Might, might not.”
“What?”
“Prepare your people.”
“But… ”
“You don’t have much time.”
The man backs away, his face creasing in horror, as though reality has finally hit, even though Voss has warned him a dozen times about what is coming their way, and what he needs to do about it.
Then man turns and runs for the elevator.
Voss signals to Wyatt. “Enemy aircraft inbound.”
Wyatt yells it to his recruits. “Attack is imminent, gents. Ball the fuck up, and get ready to hit the bang switch. Keep those assholes off the elevator. Do not shoot me. Do not shoot the colonel. Do not shoot the hostage. You let us worry about her. Do you understand?”
“Yes, first sergeant!”
Voss ducks under the skimmers, which have been parked to one side of the hangar entrance, and surrounded by metal cargo containers to create firing positions. He lifts Logan’s medical ruck from the deck, shrugging the straps over his shoulders. He grabs his weapon and fishes an EMP grenade from his belt. Wyatt appears next to him in full armor, holding a suppressed assault rifle with a grenade launcher attached under the barrel.
An alarm sounds as the transport passes the gun towers.
“Here she comes,” Wyatt says.
Voss locks in his helmet, signals they’re moving forward.
He leads Wyatt to the hangar entrance, and the transport appears from the dust, a floating delta-wing with a blunted nose, its bulk looming black. It skates left with the crosswind, tilting, red silt streaming over its fuselage.
Its gun lights up, punching a barrage of heavy rounds through the atmosphere shielding. The bullets sparkle through the field and shatter the check station, exploding rock and crackling rage through the hangar.
The transport shoots a rocket, then another, each hissing into the bay on a trail of smoke. Too quick to track. The pounding is instant, skull cracking. The stone wall at the far end of the hangar bursts into shards and dust, hurtling chunks of basalt into the air. One of the parked skimmers takes a block to the flight shield. Metal clangs as another big rock pounds off its wing.
Wyatt shields his helmet but doesn’t get hit.
The transport’s gun is still going, chewing the air inside the hanger as the ship sears its way through the force shielding. The cockpit comes through first, then the rest of it, a bloated metal machine trying to land.
Kill it.
Voss signals that he’s moving. He sprints across the deck and ducks under the transport. He pulls the pin on an EMP grenade then tosses it up to the ship’s hull. It clicks, latching onto metal skin.
He’s got five seconds to get out from under the aircraft, and he charges forward, sliding the last few feet on the shin plates of his armor. The vessel thrums overhead. The EMP grenade bursts with a flash of a warning light, its pulse detonation silent.
Electronics snap dead.
The hanger goes black.
The transport drops to the tarmac, all systems fried. It slams into the wreckage of the check station, and sways back from the impact, rocking wing to wing, the thin metal of its fuselage grinding against the rock.
Voss waits, holding his breath. Assaulter gear is shielded, though he’s seen it fail during an EMP burst before.
This time it doesn’t glitch.
The hangar’s atmosphere shielding doesn’t drop either. The life support system is protected but the hangar lighting is gone.
His view cuts to thermal, and the wrecked ship glows ahead, massive and broken, with a frothing plume of coolant gas spilling from a crack in the fuselage. He can hear the muffled sound of men yelling to each other inside.
The cargo ramp’s dead without power, so no use to them. They’ll move to the front of the aircraft and blow the front hatches to escape.
He signals to Wyatt.
The sniper comes up behind him, taps his shoulder, and so he moves, leading the way to the transport hull, then around to the aft cargo ramp. The ramp is sealed tight by a latch at the top, and two air pistons on either side, all of which are vulnerable to breacher charges.
From the nose of the aircraft, the forward hatches blow out, a echoing bang followed by the clatter of metal on the deck.
The Bounders inside the transport are busting out, yelling as they push into the hangar, moving on the rattle of gunfire.
Tracers streak toward the skimmers and get answered by the SAW chewing air back, forcing heads down.
The air crackles with live fire, rounds sparking off rock and steel plate.
Wyatt activates the two shielded skeetos, which rise like tiny helos in the air, flashing once for readiness. Then he strips the packaging off a smart breacher and hands it to Voss, who turns it on and allows it to scan for its own attach point along the ramp.
Hold on, Petra. We’re coming.
Pitch black, and she’s free, thrown from the bench in a crash impact, her slicked hand yanking right out of the restraint. There’s no power humming through the hull, and no emergency lights either. EMP maybe. Fried everything.
Still, she can hear Kazak lashing out over bursts of gunfire, spewing a vicious tirade, yelling for rockets. He’s pushing men forward, and slapping armor, calling for death. No one’s giving up.
The orange glow of chemical lights fill the cabin, men snapping plastic sticks because their helmets are now non-functional. Chem lights are waving around like torches. Kazak is headed in her direction, no doubt ready to haul her up and use her as a shield.
Move, wild thing. No time for stupid.
She gropes for something to hold onto.
“Time to go, Petra,” Kazak yells from the hold, coming closer.
She grits her teeth, holding one arm close because the shrapnel’s still digging into her stomach with its slivers, her ribs flexing like they’re broken, pain so sharp there’s no breathing with it. She’s able to lift up a bit, drag her weight along the floor. Nausea clamps her insides, drugs unable to keep her steady. Her head’s too light, vision blurred with orange shadows.
“Petra!” he roars. “Nice trick getting loose, but where can you go?”
She drags herself over piles of whatever’s fallen.
“Find her!” Kazak’s yelling. “Find her now. Get her up, you stupid shits.”
“Who cares about her?” Someone snaps back. “Who gives a fuck about her? They’re firing on us.”
“Not into the ship, they’re not. Think about that.”
There’s a pause, and then a louder rush, others joining the search.
Petra’s crawling as best she’s able, the bandages lost, blood slick underneath her. They’re coming closer. The light behind her is growing brighter, men rustling through the fallen welding equipment, pushing aside cargo nets. She can’t outrun them, scraping herself blindly along the floor.
“Here!” One of them yells, sounding like he’s right above her.
She claws forward, but he grabs onto her leg, forcing her to scream out in agony, dry wretching as he drags her back. He flips her over, his helmet visor shining orange
, glaring down. His hand closes around her throat. Air shuts off, the rush of blood hot in her ears, tears streaking from the corners of her eyes.
Fightin’ like you’re dead already, wild thing…
She growls under her breath, tearing at the man above her, her fingers finding his jaw and trying to dig into it. He tightens the chokehold on her neck, squeezing the air from her throat.
The cabin seems to explode around him, a blast of heat, followed by a deafening screech of metal. Her attacker releases her.
She gasps for air, smelling smoke and charred metal.
Something’s blown… the cargo ramp.
Two small skeeto devices zip through the air above her then burst into blinding lights, their twin cores turning with prismal rays, creating a cold glare that floods out shapes, walls…everything.
The outline of her attacker bleeds into the radiance, blurred and indistinct. She feels him shift, reaching for a weapon, but he’s thrown back, a thin splash of dark blood arching over his head.
The man falls off of her.
Kazak is yelling, and his men respond. Assault rifles open up, tearing bullets through the cabin. Too loud. Too much. She clamps her hands over her ears, trying to block it out.
A familiar figure appears above her in swaths of movement, the curve of a helmet, and armor-plated shoulders haloed in white. the long, ridged barrel of an Assaulter rifle, its muzzle shuddering with suppressed bursts.
Voss.
He crouches, focused in Kazak’s direction, and suddenly there’s another Assaulter behind him, dropping one magazine and attaching another.
The sight brings joy, even with the fight raging, and gunfire battering the air. He’s busy being an Assaulter right when she needed one.
Petra tries to hang onto it, but it fades, her breathing too difficult. She heaves air, but it burns to nothing in her throat. Above her Voss vanishes into the light, his outline disappearing into the colored-edged rays.
They can’t see him in the glare, but they know where he is. One guy pops up on his right, pistol sweeping left. Voss takes aim and squeezes the trigger, feeling the gun rip. Three rounds burst to dead center, and the guy twists as he goes down, his weapon thrown.
Bullets are hissing through cargo nets, slicing and pinging. The Bounders are firing blind, helmet visors fried in the EMP, and unable to see past the glare provided by the skeetos.
Voss moves up, and crouches beside a bench, searching for targets. His instinct is to maintain speed, stack up, and clear the ship in one go. But he and Wyatt are not a full team, too light, no security.
It has to be in, and out. No choice.
And the enemy are Bounders, which means they’re messy. It means he’s about to catch a grenade, or worse, because they toss those out even when danger’s close enough to shred their own people.
“Ten o’clock,” Wyatt warns through the comm.
Muzzle flashes from the left. A Bounder’s blasting with a sub-machine gun from behind a plastic bench. Another guy pops up on the right, sweeping toward them in full auto.
Voss aims left, on his knees, and Wyatt swings out on his right. Wyatt’s muzzle flares, punching one Bounder twice in the chest.
Voss takes longer, missing with his first burst, then adjusting, and tearing up the submachine gun shooter behind the bench. The others start to pull back, which means that grenade’s going to be sailing their way any minute.
“Exfil,” he says.
“Roger that.”
Wyatt fires to keep them down and Voss drops his attention to Petra.
She’s unconscious, her blood glowing hot in thermal, seeping up from the skin of her stomach. He curses, and kneels beside her, unable to make out whether she’s breathing or not.
Grenade’s coming. Move.
“Speaker,” he switches comm commands, hoping she can still hear him. “Petra! We’re getting you out. Can you hear me?”
She’s beyond it, and he feels the first stab of real fear, the sharp realization that this is not going his way, and maybe it all goes to shit from here. He buries the thought, slinging his weapon and reaching down to lift her from the deck as gently as he can.
She’s a ragdoll, lifeless.
“Going,” he says to Wyatt.
Wyatt pauses, changing out magazines again. He falls back to move with Voss, passing orders to his recruits over the team’s channel. “Private F, we are coming out. Get ready to cover. Do you copy?”
“They’re taking position around the elevator, first sergeant.”
“Are you shooting them, Private F?”
“Copy you.”
“What? Private F, are you firing that SAW?”
“It jammed, first sergeant.”
“Repeat.”
“Private James and Rhoades are firing their weapons, first sergeant. My gun is fucked, over.”
“Well, un-fuck it, private. We need that cover.”
“No time,” Voss says, shifting Petra onto his shoulders. He heads for the blown ramp. Wyatt follows, keeping low. The guns in the ship go silent behind them---which means grenade.
Voss sidesteps debris and charges out the ramp opening, holding onto Petra as he ducks into the darkness behind the fuselage. Wyatt is at his back when the frag pops, spraying shrapnel. It spikes through the metal of the ramp, shooting lethal shards, and Wyatt goes down, his rifle tumbling from his grasp.
Voss looks back, gritting his teeth.
Wyatt’s lying flat on the deck, and grasping for his gun. He leans on one elbow and struggles to get up, three knife-like slivers punched through the armor covering his back. There’s no time to think, no time to consider who’s coming down the ramp after them.
Voss grabs onto the sniper’s arm and starts to drag him toward the skimmers. Wyatt twists in pain, sliding on his stomach.
The recruits are shooting from behind the skimmers.
Tracers streak back and forth, issuing warbling cracks, zinging in every direction as they ricochet off stone walls.
The Bounders start popping flares, tossing them toward the skimmers to illuminate targets. At first there’s a just a few, and then way too many, and Voss’s thermal imaging goes to shit, blurring with bright spots.
“Thermal off,” he says.
His visor switches to view the natural darkness of the hangar, and the flares are burning hot all around him, creating spheres of hissing red light, a watery shimmer across the rock. The skimmers appear from the shadows ahead, glowing like metallic ghosts, the recruits taking cover behind the containers.
Voss doesn’t feel the weight. Petra---together with Wyatt in full armor---doesn’t slow him down in low G. His body is built for more, but he’s sucking loud breaths in the helmet, sweating because of the sheer volume fire.
He charges toward the two recruits under the skimmers. One looks his way---Private Rhoades--and it’s clear what he’s thinking.
Voss has seen it before, and it always hits him in the gut, the sight of a grunt they’ve poured everything into suddenly becoming exactly what they trained him to be, a being of absolute purpose, willing to stand between Death and his brothers at any cost.
Rhoades jams a grenade into the under-slung launcher attached to his rifle, and abandons cover. His armor glows in the red haze of flares as he swings out from a metal container and pumps the grenade toward the enemy position.
Thunk.
One. Two…
The explosion shatters part of the check station, throws rocks.
Shooting stops.
Rhoades runs toward Voss, meeting him halfway.
The kid reaches down to drag Wyatt to his feet, and support him in a wounded hurtle for cover.
Gunfire starts up again.
Voss reaches cover, ducking behind a metal container with Rhoades and Wyatt right behind him.
On the catwalk above, Fulson finally gets the jam sorted, and the SAW roars to life, clunking heavy rounds, and spilling brass, flashing a stream of tracers across the distance.
&n
bsp; Wyatt finds his breath. “It’s in my back. Get my armor off.”
Rhoades helps him unlock the suit’s chest plate and pry the back panels loose. Wyatt growls in pain, slivers of embedded shrapnel pulling out of his skin along with the armor. His uniform underneath the suit is torn and bloody, with three deep gashes appearing close to the spine where metal partially penetrated the armor. The cuts are ragged, jabbed deep into muscle.
Rhoades fumbles for the med kit tucked into his vest.
“Don’t,” Wyatt warns him off. “Just give me my gun.”
“First Sergeant.”
“We got to kill these motherfuckers, you understand that, private?”
“Yes, first sergeant.”
“She’s bleeding out,” Voss tells Wyatt.
“I got this,” the sniper replies. “Do what you have to do.”
Voss leaves Wyatt to hold the line, carrying Petra into the rear skimmer. The aircraft is parked behind all the others and is arguably the best protected. He shifts her carefully from his shoulders as he climbs the ramp, ducking into the cargo area and laying her down flat on the solid floor.
She’s been bleeding too long.
He places his rifle on the deck, removes his helmet, and yanks off his gloves, sliding two fingers into the hollow under her jaw to search for a pulse.
She doesn’t respond, but he can hear her now, breathing in labored gasps, her pulse a fast tap against his fingertips. Voss shrugs the medical ruck off his shoulders, trying to remember how the damn things are organized.
Layers of seals for EMP, or contamination, then zippers, pouches, pockets… he searches until he finds the flat med computer.
Its screen unfolds, and blips on when he presses a button.
The Rhys Corp insignia brightens the display first, appearing proudly in the computer’s small screen. “Identify Rhys Corp medical responder,” it says in a female voice. “Please say your name, or registration number, now.”
